From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-Id: <200007231912.PAA15679@smtp1.fas.harvard.edu> To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Subject: Re: [9fans] install floppy From: "Russ Cox" Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2000 15:12:55 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Topicbox-Message-UUID: e97a0bb0-eac8-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 How is root.vd created? Root.vd is a vdsqueezed mkfs -a style archive. The ``kfs'' on the install disk is really vdfs, which is quite literally a cross between vdexpand and a lib9p-based ramfs. The ramfs initializes itself with the contents of the archive. Second edition users might remember vdsqueeze and vdexpand from its installation process as well. I believe that (as then) we do not have the rights to distribute the source. Of course, AT&T has the rights to distribute the source, and they do. Vdexpand and vdsqueeze are part of AT&T Research's mammoth AST package. You'll never get the whole thing to configure under Plan 9 (trust me), but you might be successful pulling out just src/lib/libvdelta and getting it to compile. Except for some extra #ifdefs, some formatting changes, and some extra #define's to handle I/O, the code in the AST package looks approximately like what we have. I have a gzfs that serves the same purpose using /sys/src/cmd/gzip, but gzip -9 does a poorer job than vdsqueeze does, to the extent that I can't fit everything I want onto a disk using gzip. Hence I used vdsqueeze. I can probably put all of that up somewhere, modulo the vd source itself, if you're really interested. I am unable to use the floppy for installation since the June 17th update. The problem appears to be the use of bootes as the login in nvram rather than glenda, as /usr/glenda is the only directory in /usr. The boot complains of Did you install a CPU server on the machine, or change plan9.nvr on the floppy? I'm pretty sure the plan9.nvr on the floppy still has glenda in it, but maybe the boot kernel is picking up the nvram on the hard disk first. Russ